There have been known various kinds of metal disc ejectors. A typical metal disc ejector has been disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent Publication No. 63-36040 (Application No. 60-122626), which is directed to a coin ejector.
Referring to FIG. 1, the coin ejector of the above patent publication will be described below. The ejector has a funnel shape hopper (not shown) which has a generally square opening at the top end thereof for admitting coins thrown thereinto, in a randomly piled condition. Secured at the lower end of the hopper is a case 2 in the form of hollow cylinder. The cylindrical case 2 is secured on a base plate 4. Mounted on the base plate 4 and inside the cylindrical case 2 is a rotary disc 5 for moving coins in a manner as described shortly. The rotary disc 5 is mounted on a shaft 10 which is coaxial with the cylindrical case 2. The shaft 10 of the rotary disc 5 is operably connected with a motor (not shown) so as to rotate the rotary disc 5 for sliding the coins on the base plate 4. The rotary disc 5 has a multiplicity of round throughholes 11 which are spaced apart along the circumference of the rotary disc 5 for receiving therein coins that drop from above. The rotary disc 5 keeps the coins within the throughholes while the discs are slid on a circular path on the base plate 4 to an exit 13 of the circular path, which exit is formed at one lower section of the cylindrical wall of the base plate 4.
Provided between each pair of adjacent throughholes 11 are coin feed arms 12, which extend under the rotary disc 5 and beyond the line that passes through the centers of these throughholes 11. Each of the arm 12 is adapted to push a coin sitting on the base plate 4 out of the associated throughhole and force the coin out of the throughhole when the coin has neared the exit 13. The coin taken out of the throughhole by the arm 12 is guided by a coin guide 14 out of the exit 13. The coin guide 14 is provided at a position downstream of the exit 13.
In the coin ejector shown in FIG. 1, a rotary scraper 15 is provided, with its rotary shaft located outside the cylindrical case 2. The rotary scraper 15 has the same number of radially extending feed pawls 16 as the throughholes 11 of the rotary disc. The feed pawls 16 are formed such that the tips of the pawls 16 each protrudes across an opening 13a which is contiguous with the exit 13 at the lower end of the cylindrical wall of the case 2. The shaft 17, and hence the scraper 15, is operably connected with the motor such that they are rotated in synchronism with the rotary disc 5 so that the coin feed arm 12 of the rotary disc 5 and the feed pawls 16 of the rotary scraper 15 cooperate within the cylindrical case 2 to advance the coin M towards the coin guide 14.
However, any of the conventional metal disc ejector such as one described above is not provided with means for determining whether a disc such as coins and tokens are genuine or not and means for removing false discs.
This has become a serious problem for many amusement houses, since they have many kinds of similar game machines which use similar but different tokens and, in addition, there are often many similar amusement houses nearby, so that it is very likely that customers deposit intentionally or unintentionally wrong tokens in the game machines.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a metal disc ejector which is capable of determining whether deposited coins are genuine or not, and, in case it is not genuine, removing them from the ejector.